Old Friends Senior Dogs: Our Start in Dog Rescue

In Winter of 2010, we adopted Gracie from Middle Tennessee Golden Retriever Rescue to keep our six month old Pyr mix, Ginger, company. Freedom, our only other young dog had just gone to the bridge and Ginger was longing for a young friend to play with. Gracie came in like a tornado, she still does. With her came our association with MTGRR. We volunteered as much as possible with MTGRR; the only thing that we couldn't do was foster for more than a day or two at a time. We knew that any foster situation would work out one of two ways, either the dog wouldn't get along with our pack of 7 (at that time) or things would go great and we would fall in love. That Spring, we took in Bandit, a 15 year old Pyr mix who was in desperate need of a new foster home. We agreed to keep Bandit for the remainder of his life, as a long term foster dog. Sadly, Bandit only lived for a few weeks, but we knew that he had helped us to find our niche in rescue. Older dogs, especially those over 10, are hard to place and need a peaceful place to live. Moving is hard on these dogs, and we could commit to giving them a place to spend the rest of their lives. Many of our existing dogs were getting older too, and Ginger and Gracie were sensitive to the limitations of the older dogs but added a little excitement to the mix.

Since then, we have adopted several senior dogs through our association with MTGRR. The first was Lucy (then 10), followed by Rosie (14), Toby (11), bonded pair Daisy and Bo (13 and 11 - Bo passed only a month after they came), Hunny Bunny (15) and Maggie (13). All are still with us except for Rosie and Bo. We are happy to say that they all are or were enjoying their retirement years.

We are, however, not tied only to senior Golden Retrievers, we have many breeds of dogs represented in our group.

While we continue to maintain a close association with MTGRR, I am on the board of directors and an adoption coordinator and we are involved in as many ways as possible, we are now creating our own dog sanctuary to focus specifically on the needs of senior dogs of all breeds. Although our time with a senior dog is not as long as with a dog who is adopted at a younger age, we strive to give them an excellent quality of life in their later years, and focus on the happy times.

At this time we are able to care for about 14-15 dogs. We hope to someday be able to expand our horizons and have the space and means to help more.